Blender is a consummate example of the influence and opportunity for open source. Backed by a truly global developer and user community, the 3-D modeling and rendering suite runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Irix, and FreeBSD -- a breadth of platform support unmatched by commercial offerings. It lacks some of the features and polish of commercial counterparts, but its pluggable raytracing engine offers zippy rendering. Microsoft's Caligari trueSpace -- just made freely available (though not open-sourced) -- is the only worthy rival. FULL REPORT ...